Is Palm Going to Buy PalmSource?

Ed Hardy · 08-29-2005, 12:22 PM

There's a rumor going around Wall Street that Palm, Inc. is going to re-acquire PalmSource.

Read more at http://www.brighthand.com/article/Is...urce?site=Palm

Timothy Rapson · 08-29-2005, 02:33 PM

So, PalmOne and PalmSource fight over control of the OS. This came to a head just before the early Summer developers conference. The guy who headed PS saw the rejoining coming. P1 has held the threat of not using Cobalt over PS's head. Well, PS countered with Plinux that might draw other hardware mfgs (eg LG?)

P1 took out the big gun....they threatened to release a WMob phone and told PS to go jump in the lake. P1 has already won this battle. The remerger was a fait accompli the day the head of PS quit. The whole reason for that was because he saw P1 held all the cards. The threat of Plinux.....SOMEDAY...would never be enough to keep P1 from buying and totally controlling PS.

Once P1 has completed the purchase and consolidated the takeover Plinux will be quickly thrown overboard and the WMob Treo with it unless it makes a ton of money.

PlasticMan · 08-29-2005, 05:46 PM

rimm makes all the blackberys and does ok. could palm do the same? i don't know.

wshwe · 08-29-2005, 06:32 PM

A re-merger would be just more wasted resources. If the 2 got back together, I predict an untimely death of the combined entity.

interlard · 08-30-2005, 12:34 AM

PalmSource's behavior reminds me of Apple before Steve Jobs came back: they keep changing direction because nothing they do seems to be working.

It's like they've forgotten how to create a good OS for handhelds: Cobalt is late and nobody seems to want it, then they go all Linux and put all their effort into that.

A merger with Palm will add another 6 months to the schedule and by then they'll have to sell all their computers to pay the final month's rent on the building.

Sigh :-(

robrecht · 08-30-2005, 07:47 AM

Yes, it may be too late, but it's the right move IMHO. Palm's strength was always the superb integration of hardware and operating system. Can this be regained? Dunno ...

Siliconaddictio · 08-30-2005, 05:58 PM

Like bits on a harddrive's platter...as the Palm turns.....

In this episode we see some more stupid *** crap happening at a company that seems to be unable to get its crap together.
I guess Palm is getting sick of waiting for PalmSource or Palm or whatever the bloody heck they are called this week.

Tune in next week as the CEO of the month bolts, and Sony buys Palm for pocket lint and a New York corner hot dog.

What the heck is going on inside that company. I want to see a Palm version of Pirates of Silicon Valley. I'm pretty sure it would be filed under comedy.

Siliconaddictio · 08-30-2005, 06:01 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by interlard

It's like they've forgotten how to create a good OS for handhelds:

Forgotten. Hmmmmmmm. Sure....what the heck. I'll go with that.

AlanG · 09-07-2005, 11:43 PM

Will Palm buy out PalmSource? I don't think so. I suspect that Palm now has access to Palm OS Linux, like they do with Garnet and Cobalt. I also suspect that Palm is already working on (and possibly with) PalmSource to port the cell phone/smartphone version of Palm OS Linux to work on the other Palm braded handheld lines (Zire/Tungsten/Mobile Manager).

Where I see Palm going in the future is mini-tablets. Think of a 5" x 7" device running Linux and how powerful that device can be with the Palm OS GUI on top of it. Think Mac OS X (BSD Unix + Macintosh GUI). Now that doesn't mean that Palm will only make Treos and mini-tablets, but with Microsoft looking to bring out a new line of Tablet PCs in the 2007 time-frame, now is the time that Palm really needs to be working on a project like this. We know that Palm is already working on support Palm OS Linux, hence the job openning for Linux software engineers.

I don't think that the glass is half empty. I think that it's half full, and more water is being poured in.

Alan G